Rooftop Jam
by saveusmilkboy
Summary: End of episode 87 made me cry. So I decided to put it into writing.


Rooftop Jam

The roof of the car was slippery and cold. Bruises burned beneath his skin, raindrops whipped his face. Some lone part of his brain screamed 'you have a hole in your right leg, you have a hole in your right leg' but he ignored it in favour of another sensation blossoming in his belly. Hijikata recognized it as satisfaction, like the satisfaction of sinking a spoon into a bowl of fried rice after a hard day's work; the satisfaction of lighting up the first cigarette in the misty morning. Merciful fuck, he wanted a cigarette…

This was the sensation Hijikata felt now, while the tip of his sword burrowed into the shoulder of the man sitting in the car directly beneath him. Hijikata could hear him screaming, his companions bustling around, trying to figure out what to do. Pretty soon they would come up with something.

Actually, this was not a very good idea. Hijikata was certain this was not a very good idea. Three men in a speeding car could do much against one, wounded one, stranded on top of it. A single second stretched into eternity of absolute clarity, and Hijikata came to terms that this was probably it. Not just any it. The proverbial It. The final contraction of the universe, the big implosion, the reversal of the law of causation. These were the last thoughts he would ever think, the last breaths he would ever take.

He should've lighted a cigarette. Christ, he wanted a cigarette…

And what went through Hijikata's mind?

'You have a hole in your leg, man, please notice, a hole in you right leg, that's on the same side as the hand you use to write, the right, R-I-G-H-T side'

Yes, there was that.

There was also, 'I should've gone to see her'.

In fact, there was quite a lot of, 'I could've… I might've…' but these thoughts were confined to small metallic rooms buried deep into Hijikata's subconscious and plated with cardboard; the cheap but efficient sound-proofing of garage bands. There, they could make as much noise as they wanted. There, they had never stopped making noise. The same song, over and over and over and over again. Was it self-deception if you ignored the voices in your head?

Mostly what Hijikata thought was 'ah, fuck it'. It was not the depressed 'ah, fuck it' of a man who lost everything on the last hand of the evening, but the foolishly cheerful, insanely cynical and strangely peaceful 'ah, fuck it'. The 'ah, fuck it' of a man who realised the answer he had been seeking many a sleepless night had always been written on the backs of his own eyelids but who was now too tired to get out of bed and write it down. It was a deeply Buddhist 'ah, fuck it'.

A gun, followed by an arm, followed by the ugly face of a generic bad guy popped out from the window in quick succession, and took aim. Hijikata was offended by the careful, school-boy way in which this person held the pistol, almost as if he had never shot anybody in his entire life. It was never fun to be someone's maiden-kill.

Just as Hijikata repeated the enlightened 'ah, fuck it', the man jerked backwards stupidly and then proceeded to fall out of the speeding car. 'A strange thing to do, that', was the first thing Hijikata could think before he managed to gather his wits about him and get his eyes back in focus.

"Don't worry," said a low, lazy voice. It was an annoying voice that managed to say stupid things as if they were incredibly smart. Hijikata had become familiar with it over the last two years. He had heard it here and there, almost always in unexpected places. And speaking of unexpected places, this one surely took the cake…

"I just came to buy snacks," continued the helmeted figure in that same bored tone. Steering his dirty, old scooter with one hand, he reached into his clothes and withdrew a pack of extra hot chips, throwing it to the man on the rooftop of a speeding car. This type of exchange might have been considered unusual in some cultures. Under the circumstances, Hijikata scrambled to catch the pack and restricted his reaction to, "You-"

The Freelancer cut him off. "I'll just have you guys deliver it, huh? She would prefer it that way too," he concluded, driving the wooden sword through the back tire in one deft strike. The car reared, and Hijikata gripped his sword more firmly to stop himself from flying off. The men inside grunted and groaned, fighting to steady the vehicle, but he paid them no mind. Instead, Hijikata allowed the Freelancer's gaze to lead his own wordlessly to the front.

Chin down, eyes wide, pupils almost invisible, slight hunch forwards and a tension in the shoulders which was usually absent – that was Okita taking his job seriously. But at the same time something about him was triflingly, unmistakeably wrong. Hijikata felt a cold wound open at the pit of his stomach, as if he was run through by an icicle.

Of all the people in the world, Kondo and himself had the dubious privilege of witnessing that look and living to tell about it more often than anyone else. Hijikata had forgotten when it was he had seen it for the first time; ironic, really, since he may well have been the trigger for its creation. Naively, he had expected the hard-hitting adrenalin rush he felt if their eyes met while Okita was revving in high gears would eventually fade away as he got used to it. It never really did.

But what he felt now was not the suffocating surge of useless energy. It took him a moment to recognize it. It was fear; raw and irrational. The sort of fear one could only feel while dreaming; inescapable, reality-bending, nightmarish. When an everyday object, a cosy room or a person's face shifted around the edges, swallowed by a fractured shadow; when the familiar and the unknown flickered back and forth, morphing into horror.

It was Sougo, yet it was not Sougo. It was Okita with the kill-switch on, but, still, it was not. There was no amusement around his mouth and no excitement in his hands. He was…

…sad.

Hijikata jumped off the car and buried his sword into the other back tire with all his might. 'A HOLE IN YOUR FUCKING LEG, man, you can't ignore me forever' echoed through his head while the car's front flew up into the air. Hijikata kept his eyes and his mind in front of him, where a death mask only vaguely resembling Okita's face announced imminence with as much emotion as a mountain might show to those who lost their way while climbing it.

The back fender exploded in screeching fireworks as it bent and tore against the road; the front wheels howled emptily, hitting only raindrops, while the back wheels screamed against the asphalt. Inside the car, two men shouted in fear, anger and pain. Hijikata's own breathing was ragged and tortured; the Freelancer was silently controlling his noisy motorcycle. The sea foamed against the docks, rain bombarding metal containers in rapid gunfire, while the battling Shinsengumi created a constant tumult in the background. And still, the world went silent when Okita drew his sword.

The faint click of the scabbard was louder than continents colliding while the long, elegant blade ceased to be an accessory at his hip and became the extension of his biological arm.

The Freelancer swerved to the side at the same time as Hijikata, still deaf to everything except metallic whistling, rolled off in the other direction. When he managed to look back over his shoulder, the car was already halved, hovering behind Okita like a pair of gruesome hornet's wings and then bursting into flames. Sound returned to the world with that explosion.

Hijikata waited for a few seconds, gathering his laboured breath before limping closer to the fiery remains and finally lighting a cigarette. 'A hole, a hole in your—'

Okita was staring at the patch of ground to his left, without a word. Politely, Hijikata did not look at him. The Freelancer killed the engine of his bike and leaned on the handles nonchalantly but, to his credit, unobtrusively as well. Hijikata contented himself with biting on the filter of his cigarette, trying to calm his hammering heart. It thundered a frantic rhythm in his ears so loud it was becoming difficult to say whether he was hearing it, or the rain, the sea, the battle…

The battle! He needed to get back to the battle!

'LEG! HOLE!' the rational voice complained. Hijikata looked back to the peer, contemplating the horrific task of asking the Freelancer to lend him his scooter, when he saw Kondo. He was running towards the three of them, covered in blood and trailing behind himself the rest of Shinsengumi as though they were nothing more than cumbersome hair extensions. Kondo, at least, was used to walking with a unit of heavily armed men behind him.

Hijikata eyed Kondo's bloody clothes suspiciously. From his commander's movements, he could tell that none of the red liquid was his. Still, it felt wrong on him. The blood didn't go there. Hijikata didn't like it there. He had long since noticed that particular unease had nothing to do with fearing for the man's well-being. No matter how wide his smile or how stubbornly unsuccessful his love life, Kondo could cleave people in two just as easily as pick his teeth. It was just that Hijikata would've rather had him picking his teeth.

The Shinsengumi came to a slow halt ten yards away from the silent trio with quizzical, twitchy expressions on their faces. Yamazaki was there as well, Hijikata noticed. He was half angry with him, half grateful, much akin to a man who hated boats but was still glad when one came by to save him from drowning.

Kondo threw an unconcerned glance at the Freelancer, not surprised in the slightest that the man was there. His gaze then tracked the puddles of blood that led to Hijikata's leg ('a HOLE, yes a fucking HOLE, HE noticed it, so why are you being such a stubborn cunt?!'). Kondo frowned at the wound and pulled his eyes away in annoyed disapproval as though saving the scolding for later. Hijikata smirked into his cigarette, wondering if Kondo would make his eventual outburst of displeasure public (in which case he would just be aiming to chastise) or private (in which case he thought Hijikata actually needed to be taught a lesson).

Coming to stand in the odd triangle formed by the three wet men, Kondo finally looked directly at Okita. Hijikata felt thousands of ants sprint down his spine. Okita's face was still passive and dead, caught in some internal discussion with God. The scariest silence in the world.

Kondo, undaunted, only continued the one-way staring contest until, for reasons unknown, he proclaimed, "Very well, then," in a low, resolute voice and turned to the troops. Immediately, there was an eruption of movement as the back ranks ran for first aid kits and a stretcher for Hijikata while the front ranks (Yamazaki more slowly than his comrades) lunged forward to support their Vice-Commander and drown him in monotone chattering of concern. Annoying as it was, his right leg was grateful for the attention and so the only act of violence Hijikata indulged was a meaningful squeeze of Yamazaki's collar bone. He heard the spy give a choked whelp when his fingers found the nerve, and Hijikata's face blossomed into a mean smile.

Beyond the bustle of fretting men, however, he could see Okita lifting his gaze and staring at Kondo's back. The kill-switch was off once more and the death mask was thawing slowly, like a glacier, leaving raw emotions Hijikata thought improper to stare at so blatantly.

What was it that Kondo had concluded, he could not even phantom. What it meant to Okita… he could not stand to contemplate. Whatever it was, it seemed to be something profound, and far beyond his grasp, lying between the broad-shouldered man and the hunched boy (and how odd it was to think of Okita as 'the boy') who was now walking past his commander and coming to a stop next to the Freelancer. Hijikata couldn't see if they said something to each other, but he could hear the scooter speed off.

Did the Freelancer know how much trust he had just been shown? Hijikata doubted it.

So he concentrated on his cigarette, trying to remember the enlightened resolution he had glimpsed before, to no avail. His heart beat a morose rhythm, and all he was left with was pain and a faint taste of spice he thought he had forgotten already.

The black-clad, wet men around him scattered, leaving only Yamazaki who was still supporting Hijikata's back. Lost in thoughts, Hijikata was surprised to see his own arm slung over the shorter man's shoulders.

"You just had to spill it, didn't you?" he growled slowly, looking into the wreckage and flames that were the dockyards.

Yamazaki looked to the floor, curving his spine into a ball to make himself as small as possible. "I…"

"You what? Judged that your superior officer was not in a sane state of mind and decided to override him? What did I tell you about thinking, Yamazaki?"

"That if I did it too often, I'd get to meet my insides face to face, sir," recited Yamazaki in a small, defeated voice.

"Right," sighed Hijikata and looked up to the rain clouds. They were thinning from the heavy, greasy blue-grey to a bland silvery white. A depressing colour. "Let's get out of here," he mumbled. Obediently, Yamazaki fell into step with him, holding a careful, not overly patronising hand around his waist.

The fifteen minute ride to the hospital was physically exhausting. Trapped in the back of a white ambulance car with only bleeping machines, tubes, needles and Yamazaki staring at him. They patched him up in the emergency room, mumbling how he was lucky the bullet missed the bone.

Lucky, right. If it hadn't missed, he would be dead now. Dead, asleep, at peace, away. Not in a hospital with Yamazaki still looking over him like a mother hen, with Kondo pissed off something fierce, with Okita defrosting into tears somewhere in another time and space.

"You're not planning on staying here indefinitely, are you, Yamazaki?" asked Hijikata in a tone that, he hoped, still came off forbidding enough, despite the painkillers they'd fed him and the constricting sadness in his throat. It was stuck there. The stupid thing wouldn't go back down no matter how much he swallowed. And he'd be damned before he let it out in front of Yamazaki. "Now, you see I'm not going anywhere. Go see if you can be useful somewhere else. If you can be useful anywhere."

Yamazaki stared quietly for a moment too long. "I feel responsible, sir," he uttered in a tiny voice.

"Damn straight you are responsible, disobeying a direct order," growled Hijikata and sat up in the starched, white sheets. They had thoughtfully provided him with a single room, far away on the fifth floor. Far away, that is, from everything he might be tempted to do. He wondered if it was just a coincidence or Kondo's orders.

"With all due respect, sir, that is not what I meant," Yamazaki shook his head.

Hijikata, annoyed, snorted and looked out the window. The clouds had opened up, revealing the orange-purple spectacle of sundown. "Yeah, the Commander has a way of doing that."

"Sir?"

"Making you feel responsible for things over which you had exactly no control whatsoever. Nobody could be right every time," he chuckled sourly. "But he sure makes you want to try."

"You think you were right, sir?" Yamazaki asked. "Trying to do everything on your own? Almost getting yourself killed?" When Hijikata said nothing, Yamazaki braved, "I won't pretend to know what happened between you and-"

"You don't fucking know!" Hijikata cut him off. He couldn't be sure whether Yamazaki heard the raw edge in his voice and mistook it for rage, or understood it as desperation. Either way, it shut him up. Hijikata could not look his way. He sucked in a harsh breath, feeling ashamed. "Just… just go down and see that they're doing everything properly. With the casualties, I mean."

Yamazaki got up slowly in a deliberately intelligent way that says 'right, I get it, you want some time alone, you could've just said so' but turned around after a few steps and said, in an uncharacteristically daring voice: "I stand by what I'd said before, though, sir. You should go and see her."

Hijikata's eyes snapped back at him in anger but, finding no words to express any of the emotions he was feeling, he just stared his subordinate down. Boyish face pale with sorrow, Yamazaki shook his head in defeat and left the room quietly.

See her? It would destroy the last ounce of self-control he had left in him. It would break him.

No, there was no need. Besides, there was nothing to tell her. She knew everything already. That woman always had known everything beforehand.

Hijikata reached over to his coat to pull a pack of cigarettes only to be met by a large NO SMOKING sign. Grunting, he pulled the covers off and yanked his healthy leg out of the bed. He took his time moving the wounded one, grunting every now and then when the muscles pulled awkwardly. Trying to balance on the crutches while pulling along the stupid IV rack they had stuck into his arm, was an act of heroism in and of itself. He was glad no one could see him clobbering around with all the grace of a newborn giraffe. The trip up the two flights of stairs took the better part of a quarter of an hour, but eventually he reached the top floor. The doors to the roof were insidiously difficult to open. Suicide prevention measure, he wondered. One could fling oneself from any floor, but people did insist on going as far as they could. If you got to choose the place in which you die, you want it to be on the top floor. One crutch propping him at the armpit, the other stuck between his legs, and the IV pulling on his vein uncomfortably, Hijikata was very grateful indeed that nobody could see him now, opening the heavy door with his chin like an idi-

"Oh, it's you. I thought there was a breakout in the psych ward. Almost called the nurse on you," said the Freelancer holding the door open and staring at Hijikata, bent over and twisted around the walking sticks.

"Oh, fuck," said Hijikata and couldn't say any more.

The Freelancer moved over for him to step onto the wet rooftop and for a single blissful second Hijikata thought he might leave. He stared at him hopefully. The Freelancer stared back. Deadpan…ly. When it became apparent that the man had no merciful inclination to leave him alone, Hijikata tried growling him away. "Why are you still here, anyways?"

"Delivery service," answered the Freelancer. Without another word, he slumped against the wall and slid into a crouch, propelling his gaze into the indefinite. Hijikata gave another growl of bone-deep dislike but, seeing how the Freelancer was not as easily shooed away as Yamazaki, started a three-legged wobble towards the far side of the roof.

"Oi, here," shouted the Freelancer suddenly. An orange-and-black pack of extra-hot snacks came flying at Hijikata and the words 'death by friendly fire' echoed through his mind while he scrambled to catch the projectile without falling all over himself. He miscalculated, forcing too much weight onto his wounded leg. Sharp, intense pain shot up his body but he managed to stay upright.

"The hell?" Hijikata swore, arms outstretched awkwardly and gripping a packet of chips.

"You dropped that," the Freelancer waved a hand over his shoulder and said no more.

Hijikata stared at the piece of wall behind which the man had disappeared, wondering if he would now have the decency to leave. Friendly fire, indeed.

He straightened and found refuge against the railing. The sunset looked even more fatalistically beautiful now that he could smell it, and just like that it hit him, an echo of that wisdom he had glimpsed on the rooftop of the car. He would never see this sunset again. He would never watch another sunset the same way again. He would never be the person he had been that morning, or the morning before that. Tomorrow when he woke up, and all the tomorrows thereafter, he would change anew.

He would never be right every time. And this time, there had been no right, only so many wrongs. Ah, fuck it.

There was no going back. It was all just a pretty name for a checkmate, anyway. All the missed chances, all the should've's, could've's, and wish-I-had's would only ever be echoes of his former self, locked up in the rooms of his mind.

She was dead now, and whatever future they could have made together if Hijikata had ever listened to those echoes, was dead with her.

"Fuck, it's spicy," he mumbled just in case the Freelancer was still paying attention. "It's too spicy. It's so fucking spicy my eyes are watering, damn it."

He was fooling no one. This time, not even himself.

 _Decided to re-write an old one-shot about episode 87. Hope you enjoy it. Cheers!_


End file.
